Monday, July 27, 2009

I played a hitman in an episode of Hanchou which aired on Monday nights on TBS in Japan. It's finished its' run now, but it was a reasonably popular drama about a team of police officers and detectives that dealt with the various n'er-do-wells that haunt the crowded confines of Tokyo.

The headliner of the series was Kuranosuke Sasaki, and he played the lead detective of the team.In episode number 12, Michael Shorter was my name, and shooting mafia-related types hanging out in Tokyo was my game. But in the end I was rather easily apprehended by the cops. The featured guest of this episode was kabuki actor Kamejiro Ichikawa who played the role of Andy Matsuo.

The episode took several days to shoot, of course, and the longest of those days was spent out at a complex of warehouses in Chiba where the episode's climax occurs and the bad guy gets nabbed.

One of the highlights of the day was the BBQ that the crew set up for dinner. They brought out a very good variety of beef and pork cuts and had three separate grills going at the same time.

It was just what the doctor ordered as I had spent the previous two hours on set with a gun pointed at my nose.

There's a quick preview of episode 12 viewable here. If you go to that page, you should see a small, round, red button on the left side of the screen. Clicking that will open a player that will show you the very short trailer for the show.